The need for dignity.

Some good stuff from David Brooks:

Washington absorbed, and later came to personify what you might call the dignity code. The code was based on the same premise as the nation’s Constitution — that human beings are flawed creatures who live in constant peril of falling into disasters caused by their own passions. Artificial systems have to be created to balance and restrain their desires.

The dignity code commanded its followers to be disinterested — to endeavor to put national interests above personal interests. It commanded its followers to be reticent — to never degrade intimate emotions by parading them in public. It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm.

…

But the dignity code itself has been completely obliterated. The rules that guided Washington and generations of people after him are simply gone.

We can all list the causes of its demise. First, there is capitalism. We are all encouraged to become managers of our own brand, to do self-promoting end zone dances to broadcast our own talents. Second, there is the cult of naturalism. We are all encouraged to discard artifice and repression and to instead liberate our own feelings. Third, there is charismatic evangelism with its penchant for public confession. Fourth, there is radical egalitarianism and its hostility to aristocratic manners.

Dignity, duty, loyalty – virtues I wish were discussed more.

A note on “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.”

Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work has been very helpful. Takes a bit more realistic (ironic? Stoic?) view of work than Crawford, who falls a bit too much – though he tries to avoid it – for the idea of work as self-realization. John Gray has an excellent review of de Botton’s book here. That John Gray gives it a positive review should tell you something.

UPDATE: I want to clarify that I still think Crawford’s book is very useful. His critique of the mental/manual distinction in work is crucial. Also quite valuable is his exposing as misleading the characterization of office work as intellectual work. My only criticisms are those pointed out by others. First is the aforementioned tendency to seeing work as self-realization. Second, there is a reason that blue-collar dads, including my own, tell their children to go to college so they don’t end up as manual laborers. It can be argued that they had inaccurate perceptions of the “intellectual” work they were urging their children into. But we should also remember that they knew firsthand about the disadvantages of “manual” work.

Some books on work.

I’ve been reading about work lately. It all began with this list of essential life skills and my decision to learn a few of them, beginning with basic auto maintenance. The author of the list may have had in mind the simpler sorts of things like changing the oil but I decided I needed to learn a bit more than that. Not that I think I’ll ever be a qualified mechanic; I’d just like to be able to do some of the basics myself. As I continued to think about it I decided I’d better start with simpler small engines. My weed eater offered itself up as my first experiment when it died while trimming the fence row. It mocks my efforts to revive it.

Along the way I was thrilled to hear about Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class as Soulcraft. I had read the original New Atlantis essay upon which it is based back when it first appeared. After dropping a few huge hints Rachel gave me a copy as an early Father’s Day present. I think my expectations were too high. Perhaps I was hoping it would be a landmark book in my life, like Wendell Berry’s What Are People For?, Matthew Scully’s Dominion, or Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons. It wasn’t that, but it’s great nonetheless. Francis Fukuyama does a good job summarizing it in this NYT review. Perhaps the best thing it did for me was assure me that I am not alone in feeling less than useful as an office worker with no practical skills. But more than that, it positively asserts the goodness in itself of manual work.

I’ve read enough articles by cultural trendwatchers to know that the plural of anecdote is not data. Nevertheless it is interesting to note the appearance of Crawford’s book at the same time we’re beginning to read stories like this one about a young professional who gave up the cubicle for farming. Or this one about Yale graduates wanting to get into sustainable agriculture work. I sincerely hope an increasing number of young people begin to value all kinds of good work and abandon the false promises and prejudices about “professional” work.

I’m currently reading The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, wherein Alain de Botton, in spectacular prose, tries to penetrate to the emotional core of work. How does it add to our happiness and increase our misery? How does the rise of specialization contribute to feelings of alienation? It even has a chapter on accountancy, for which I broke my longstanding front-to-back reading rule. Salon has reviewed the book favorably here.

I have my eye on other promising books on work. Two by Richard Sennett: The Craftsman and The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. And one by Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

Truth be told it’s easier for me to read about work than to actually get off the couch and do it.

The benefits of considering the worst.

According to William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life one of the “psychological techniques” we can learn from the Stoics is what he calls negative visualization. If managing our desires is a key to tranquility then learning to desire what we already have is essential. One way to do this is to consider how our lives could be worse, i.e., negative visualization.

Irvine points to a psychological phenomenon called hedonic adaptation in which, for example, lottery winners finally live the life they’ve dreamed about and end up no happier than they were before winning. They become dissatisfied with their luxuries. This happens to everyone, not just the wealthy. Negative visualization forestalls this process by extinguishing acquisitiveness and encouraging thankfulness for what we already have.

One way to exercise negative visualization, suggests Irvine, is to consider you own and your family’s death. It was here that I realized that, taken the wrong way, negative visualization could cause paralysis. If I was to really live this day as if it were my last then the only thing I’d do is spend time with family and friends. There would be a whole host of good things that I would normally be doing that I wouldn’t do. I’d suggest, then, that rather than asking “What would I do today if I knew it was my last day alive?” we should ask “If I die tomorrow will I be able to look back at today and know that I spent it wisely?” By rephrasing the question in this way it causes me to consider my priorities, not just plan my last meal.

It seems to me then that negative visualization is a good idea so long as it is oriented to thankfulness and proper prioritization and not as an exercise in morbidity.

The Trichotomy of Control, or, How to Lower Your Stress Level.

This Dilbert comic provides me with a good opportunity to write about what William Irvine, in A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, calls the dichotomy of control. Asok’s new goal is manageable, being highly unlikely, but it’s also out of his control. The Stoics would suggest that if he wants to avoid disappointment he would do better to desire something within his control. (Hey, there’s a whole shelf of books at B&N with titles like [Insert pop culture phenomenon] and Philosophy, so I can surely introduce a bit on Stoic philosophy with a Dilbert strip.)

Here’s Irvine:

Epictetus’ Handbook opens, somewhat famously, with the following assertion: “Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.” He offers our opinions, impulses, desires, and aversions as examples of things that are up to us, and our possessions and reputation as examples of things that aren’t. From this assertion it follows that we are faced with a choice in the desires we form: We can want things that are up to us, or we can want things that are not up to us.

Clearly if we want a peaceful life we should desire those things that are up to us and not worry about those things which are not up to us. Irvine disputes whether some of the things Epictetus says are within our control are actually up to us. Impulses and desires, for example, usually catch us unawares, though whether we act on them is usually up to us. He also says that it isn’t clear what Epictetus means by something not being up to us. It could mean that we have either no control or incomplete control. Better, says Irvine, to speak of a trichotomy of control:

1. Things over which we have complete control.
   • Example: The goals we set for ourselves. The values we form.
2. Things over which we have no control at all.
   • Example: Whether the sun will rise tomorrow.
3. Things over which we have some but not complete control.
   • Example: Whether we win while playing tennis.

We should definitely concern ourselves with things in category one. It is the most important category, but it is also fairly well understood. A good deal of stress, however, comes from misunderstanding categories two and three. For example, the past is something over which we have no control at all, yet “crying over spilled milk” is one of the most common ways we raise our stress level. We can and must learn from the past. One of the failures of the perpetually preoccupied, says Seneca, is that they never take the time to reflect on their past because they never disentangle themselves from this present moment. But we must no more worry over the past than we should worry over whether the sun will rise tomorrow.

The key to dealing with things in category three is the way in which we order our desires. Irvine uses the example of winning a tennis match. (Weddle, if you’re reading this, no smart alleck comments from you.) Though we have some influence, the outcome of a tennis match is not entirely within our control. The key then to managing our emotional reaction to the outcome is to internalize our desires. If our desire is merely to win then if we lose we will be disappointed. If, on the other hand, our desire is to play our best game then we may be satisfied whether or not we win. In short, if we want to manage our reactions to those things that are not entirely within our control then we must manage those things that are within our control, namely, our desires. Desire what you can control and not what you cannot control.